


don't care if heaven won't take me back

by thedarknesswithin (babylxxrry)



Series: Christmas Gifts 2017 [3]
Category: Pentatonix, Superfruit
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Demon Mitch, Discussions of Good and Evil, Fallen Angel Scott, M/M, kirsther is mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-19 11:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13123098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babylxxrry/pseuds/thedarknesswithin
Summary: “If I’m honest, I don’t like thinking about it. It scares me a little, just how uncertain life is, even though the ultimate certainty is death and being sorted to one of two eternities. Humans can’t fall, remember? If they’re up there, they’re up there. If they’re down here, they’re down here. I don’t know why it’s different for angels.”[scott is a fallen angel, mitch is a demon, and they talk about good versus evil]





	don't care if heaven won't take me back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ObsidianWings_666](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObsidianWings_666/gifts).



> HAPPY HOLIDAYS JAS!!! HERES THE ANGEL/DEMON AU YOU WANTED SO LONG AGO OMFG I FINALLY FINISHED IT I HOPE YOU LIKE IT!!!!! I LOVE YOU SO SO SO MUCH <3 this drifted really far into discussions of ethics and good vs evil and shit like that lmao i hope it's okay

Scott blinks the fog from his eyes. He can feel that he’s on hard ground, something cement, perhaps, but other than that, he can’t see any kind of wall or ceiling from where he’s curled on his side. He’s certainly not where he used to be, which could be counted as some kind of heaven. This could be the equivalent hell, he supposes, but it’s nothing like the flaming, screaming cave he’d been expecting. It’s almost the opposite. It doesn’t feel like he’s outside, because the air is still and silent, but he also can’t say he’s in a room- even with eyesight far superior to a human’s, he can’t see anything a few yards beyond where he’s currently laying.

Scott pulls himself up into a quasi-sitting position. He can still feel his wings on his back, but when he flutters them, they’re definitely not strong enough for him to fly. They’re heavier than usual, like he’s been flying for too long, but the slow, steady beat of his heart says otherwise. There’s probably some type of hex on the area, now that he thinks about it, so that could explain why he can’t tap into most of his usual powers. He stands up, rolling his shoulders and stretching his arms and wings out. They’re all a little sore, and his legs are kind of noodly. A few paces back and forth fixes that easily enough, and then his mind is turned to where the fuck he is.

“Hello?” Scott calls into the darkness surrounding him. It doesn’t echo in the dead air, which is somehow more unnerving than it should be. It’s not stuffy, though, the air is cool and clean, but it absorbs all sound like some type of the sound-dampening foam Scott’s seen his fair share of on earth.

“Where am I? Is there anyone there?”

There’s no response.

A minute passes, and Scott tries to pace farther out of his circle of light, which is somehow existing in place without a source, but once he gets a couple feet past the edge, it starts to feel like his atoms are dissolving and pulling apart, so he steps back with a shiver.

It’s a while before Scott starts to hear a light tapping coming from somewhere in the darkness, circling him, around and around and around and around. He thinks he’s hallucinating until a slim form materializes out of thin air, just outside his light circle so the shadows fall heavy on it. The form isn’t all solid, wavering in and out of visibility, but it’s a vaguely humanoid shape.

“Scott.” The figure’s voice is ethereal, like an angel’s, which, again, Scott _was not expecting._ There’s the familiar demon undertone, though, the doubling of the voice two exact octaves down, but this one isn’t as chilling as ones Scott’s heard in the past.

“Who are you?”

The figure takes one step into Scott’s circle, solidifying into a full person- erm, demon, Scott supposes. And _fuck_ , are they beautiful.

“Mitch, Class Two demon. I use both he and she pronouns and I like both equally even though most use he. You?”

And wow, that’s new to Scott. Up top, they don’t usually announce pronouns along with name and rank, they just kind of wait to ask if at all.

“Scott, used to be Class One angel but I suppose I’m Fallen now so I’m not sure. He/him for pronouns.”

Mitch nods, taking another step forward, so Scott can see him a little better. Physically, he’s small, at least compared to Scott, but his presence is unnervingly solid even as his visible manifestation flickers every now and then. He’s in all black, wings tucked neatly against his back. They’re not the reptilian ones Scott’s accustomed to seeing from the Class Fives and Sixes he encounters every so often on earth, rather, they’re sleek black feathers, much like Scott’s own white ones.

Thick-soled boots tap against the floor with every projected step Mitch takes, and Scott finds himself wishing there wasn’t a hex against him being able to dissolve his physicality at least a little. He’s uncomfortable being fully solid while he has another being half-here, playing at some type of cat-and-mouse intimidation game.

Mitch laughs softly, “That’s what it’s there for, isn’t it. I’ll lift it in a moment, just as soon as we discuss what’s happening here.”

And, shit, Scott forgot that Class One and Two demons all have some type of psychic capability. He turns slowly in place to follow Mitch. “I appreciate it, but could you stand still while we discuss?”

Mitch shrugs. “Could, I suppose. For what price, though, is the question.”

“Price?”

“Mmhm. Down here, we deal in direct exchanges of abilities and products. There’s no real economy, so to speak, or governing body that will establish a common means of trade.”

“So what if you have nothing to offer?”

Mitch stops pacing, turning to face Scott. Scott shivers involuntarily as Mitch’s eyes lock straight on his. They’re not all black like the stereotypes say. Mitch’s are a deep brown, which is almost scarier than flat black. It gives him some humanity and that’s dangerous because Scott already knows it’ll tempt him to drop his guard. He can’t, not until he’s more familiar with this place.

“There’s always something to offer, Scott. Up there, you work within ethics and morality. Here, if you really must give something, there’s always a demand for slave labor as well as in the sex trade. It’s also possible to sacrifice certain feelings or emotions for given amounts of time as payment. You’ll pick it up quickly, though I do have to warn you against dealing in anything mental until you’ve been here at least a few months.

“In any case, let’s talk basics. Welcome to what humans would probably call Hell, though we generally prefer Underworld. I’m sure you know all the demon classes and the like, but we can review if you want.”

Scott sits on the floor. “Go for it.”

Mitch sits across from him with a sigh. “Can I drop the demon octave?”

Scott startles. “Sorry?”

“Like this,” Mitch says, voice clear and unmuddied by the undertone. “Rather than this,” and suddenly the rasp is back.

“Whatever you want,” Scott says. “You’re not as scary without it.”

Mitch rolls his eyes. “I don’t offer to drop that to just anyone. All the humans get it and most of the Fallen, too, but I’ve been giving tours the entirety of today and my voice is tired and you’re not that bad for a Fallen, so. And I’m not sure if you lot up there know this, but most of us only put that on when we’re talking to people we don’t trust, which tends to be most everyone.”

“Oh. Okay, sure.” Scott’s not sure if he should be wary or honored by the fact that Mitch wants to leave his demon voice off.

“As I was saying,” Mitch starts again in what apparently is his normal voice, “Demon classes. There’s six classes of us. One is the highest and most powerful, six are the lowly ones, and everything in between. Ones almost never go topside to earth, and they live the lowest underground. Most of them will keep to themselves unless provoked, and shit goes to shit if you do that, so don’t. They’re the ones that do high-capacity possessions of humans and work major fuckery on earth and in heaven. Twos like me are mostly like Ones except we’re a little less powerful and we do a lot of the general admin shit. There’s a choice between working directly with the strong witches and necromancers on earth, having a desk job and processing paperwork for incoming residents, or what I do- giving tours to the new people or Fallen. The Ones are ‘too important’ to do that, and the Threes are all idiots so it falls to us. Threes are our workmen, the carpenters and mechanics and the like. Fours are the ones that generally end up being summoned by teenagers with Ouija boards and amateur spells. They like to wreck general havoc on earth, but they’re basically harmless to immortals. Fives and Sixes are our armies. The Fives are marginally smarter than the Sixes, so they get orders from specific Twos and pass those along to the Sixes.”

Scott nods. He knows all of this, courtesy of years spent fighting and studying demons. He just never thought he’d be down here with them.

“They’re easy to tell apart- Ones have a very, very strong presence that you will recognize immediately, no explanation needed there. They have no physical form- the closest you’ll see is a vaguely solid mass of black that’s never still, always evolving. Us Twos have a fully dissolved form as well as a solid form, and when we’re solid, we take various human forms and have black-feathered wings,” Mitch spreads his own and stretches them out to their full length, less than Scott’s own wingspan but equally as intimidating as the rest of him. “Threes and Fours have solid humanoid forms primarily, and some of them can semi-dissolve but mostly not. Fours have developed a specific form that they appear to humans in, but that’s not really important. Fives and Sixes are really nothing more than animals, they’re permanently solid and have wings and skin like reptiles.”

That’s good to know. Scott nods and stands, wincing when his joints pop. That’s not normal. Mitch needs to lift this hex before his body turns semi-mortal, which has been rumored to be possible under the right incantations for the right amounts of time.

Mitch sighs, as if he’s read Scott mind again. “That’s bullshit, Scott, what do they tell you up there?”

Scott shrugs. “Can you _please_ lift this, though, I miss being able to hover.”

Mitch rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, fine, just promise me you’re not going to try and fly through the Mid to try and get back up. It’s a long flight and they’re not going to take you back.”

“I won’t,” Scott promises, because he’s mainly just very, very tired right now.

“Okay,” Mitch says before he lowers his voice and mutters something under his breath. There’s a crackle in the air and then Scott feels like he’s back to normal, even though his brain is suddenly cloudy.

“Sorry about that, Scott, that hex was protecting your mind from the fog that happens down here to the new Fallen. It’ll clear up in a couple days, and it’ll be worse but clear faster if you interact with more of the pure demons, like me. Coincidentally, I’ve been assigned to get you settled and adjusted for the next week, so you’re kind of stuck with me.”

“O-Okay,” Scott mumbles, swaying on his feet. He’s so, so sleepy. “’m sleepy,” he slurs somewhere in Mitch’s direction before he’s falling down, down, down.

The last thing he hears before he succumbs to sleep is Mitch heaving another sigh.

“Oh Jesus Christ, why do they _all_ do this.”

-

The next time Scott blinks his eyes open, the ground’s soft under him and there’s a blanket on top of him. Wait. He’s in a bed. He looks around blearily and his sleepy gaze lands on Mitch, who’s staring at him from the end of his bed. He’s sitting against the wall, knees pulled up to his chest and chin resting on them. He’s pretty. Like. Really pretty.

Mitch flushes pink. “Thanks, Scott, you’re not too bad yourself.”

Fuck. Did he say that out loud, because that wasn’t supposed to happen.

“Yeah, you did say that out loud, and you know we can read your mind fairly easily, right, so even if you didn’t…”

“Sorry,” Scott says, dragging a hand over his face. “That was inappropriate.”

Mitch shrugs. “I get it a lot,” he says like it’s a secret.

“That doesn’t make it appropriate.”

“That’s up to your definition of appropriate.”

“I-” Scott realizes he doesn’t really _have_ a solid definition of appropriate. It’s all subjective, isn’t it?

Mitch nods. “Yeah. But seriously, don’t worry about it. I love compliments.”

Then he winks, and Scott dies a little more inside.

“Oh, um. Sorry for passing out, by the way.”

“Don’t worry about it. All the new Fallen do. I’m used to it,” Mitch smiles, uncurling a little. “Now, I’ve gotta show you around here and explain some shit but it’s pretty intuitive. Also, I tried a combination of different charms to help with that brain fog but I did them all while you were sleeping so I’m not sure how else they might affect you, maybe stand up and walk a few steps.”

Scott sits up, flinching when a sharp pang shoots through the back of his head. It dulls into a throb that’s just painful enough to be annoying. Mitch is watching him with a fairly neutral expression, so he swings his legs off the side of the bed and stands up.

And then flops back onto the bed. His entire head is screaming now, almost literally, and he buries his face in his hands.

“Make it stop, Mitch, please” he whines at Mitch, peeking out from between his fingers as Mitch stands up and drifts towards him, face full of concern.

“So I fucked something up,” is his first response before there’s a gentle hand in his hair, brushing the mess over to the side, and to Scott’s surprise, it’s helping a little.

“Yeah, I’d say so,” Scott groans as another pang shoots from the top of his head to what feels like must be his entire nervous system.

Mitch sighs, his hand stilling on Scott’s head. There’s another muttered spell, and the pain in Scott’s head subsides enough that he can at least focus.

“Better?”

Scott nods. “Yeah. Thanks. So about this whole… Hell thing and you getting me settled. How long are you gonna be around? Is this like probation?”

Mitch snorts. “Sure, if you wanna call it that. Usually I try to dump y’all as fast as possible because ninety percent of you are massively entitled assholes. For you, though, I’ll stick around for a few days and get your head screwed on right before you’re on your own. Speaking of which, you’re awake and mostly functioning right now, so I’m gonna take you over to Admissions and get your ID and registrations set up so you can actually get around without me. C’mon. I’ll show you the rest of the area on the way.”

Scott gets up, headache almost gone by now, and follows Mitch out of the room. They enter into a sitting room of sorts, where a petite girl is sprawled on the couch, head pillowed in the lap of another woman.

“Kirstin, Candace, meet Scott. He’s our newest Ex-A. Be nice to him,” Mitch says, and the girls look up.

“Ex-A?” Scott whispers to Mitch.

“Ex-Angel. Rolls off the tongue easier than Fallen,” Mitch replies as one of them, the tiny blonde, comes up to Mitch and kisses him on the cheek.

“Hi, Scott. I’m Kirstin. I see that Mitch has taken a shine to you. She can be quite… picky at times, so count yourself lucky. She literally almost decapitated me the first time she met me, so the mere fact that she choosing to help you says a lot. I’m assuming you’re headed to Admissions?”

“Yeah,” Mitch says. “Wanna tag along? I know Esther’s working right now.”

Kirstin nods. “About time I surprised her at work anyways.”

On the way to Admissions, Scott starts to get a general idea of the layout of the place—where the dining halls and rec rooms and common areas are, where the portals to different levels are, where he can go if he needs help after the first few days, and a myriad of other information he hasn’t had time to process yet.

Kirstin and Mitch are easy to get along with, quick wits and sharp tongues reminding Scott of some of his best friends back up in Heaven. They joke about everything from current Earth politics in remarkably blunt terms to a quick debate about the definition of life and death.

“Perks of the allowance of complete and utter free speech,” Mitch explains. “Though I will admit that from what I’ve seen, the population down here with the capability to understand policy tends to lean pretty left, so you might be in the minority if you’re red.”

“No way,” Scott’s quick to clarify. “No, I’m way left.”

“Good,” Mitch and Kirstin say simultaneously, and that’s that.

They get to the Admissions office without any incident, and there’s barely anyone else there, just a couple of stray guides wandering around on their breaks.

Kirstin goes right up to one of the counters, greeting the girl behind it with a sweet little peck to the lips.

“Scott, meet my girlfriend, Esther. She’ll get you all set up faster than anyone else here.”

“You’re biased,” Esther interjects smoothly, but she smirks a second later. “I’m a shift manager for a reason.”

Esther takes down all of Scott’s information and prints him an ID card that reminds him of the school IDs he sees humans carrying around school campuses.

“This will get you access to all of the buildings on this level and any level for Classes 3 through 6. It’ll get you some access to Class 2 places, but the number at the bottom there is your ID number. That’s what you use to request access to some of Class 2 and anything Class 1, though you shouldn’t have any need to access Class 1 quarters anytime soon. I put you on the regular meal plan, so you’ll have five scan-ins to any cafeteria every day. Mitch should be able to explain everything else to you, so I’ll leave y’all to it.”

Kirstin decides to stay back to hang out with Esther, so Scott follows Mitch to one of the portal stations they’d seen earlier.

“I’m gonna take you somewhere that I’ve never taken anyone else, okay? It’s okay if you want to opt out or whatever, I just trust you enough to bring you there.”

“I’ll go,” Scott says without a moment of hesitation. If Mitch wants to take him to the furthest corner of hell and murder him, he’s totally okay with it.

They end up at a bridge that overlooks the area Scott recognizes as the area he first started in.

“Sometimes I like to come here and think,” Mitch whispers after a moment of silence. “About why some people end up here and some people don’t. About why some of you angels end up down here. About why demons like me were created to live here. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all that bad down here, but we’ve all heard things about heaven, y’know? Like it’s all perfect and amazing and stuff, but I can’t tell how much of is true. How much of it is just lore told to humans to make them behave “properly”? How much of it is actually real?”

Scott stares down at the empty circles of white light against the darkness of the room. “I don’t know, really. Heaven wasn’t bad, at all. Actually, it was a lot like this, just more… light? Happiness? I’m not sure. It felt different, but at the very heart of it, I don’t really know how different it is compared to here.”

“That’s fair, I guess,” Mitch murmurs after a while. “I just think it’s weird how things like us, demons and angels, we were designed to live here, in the forever in the afterlife even before humans existed. Then when humans die, they’re assigned to one side or another depending on how they lived their lives. It’s a little unnerving to me. What if I weren’t a demon? What if I’d been born a human that didn’t know I’d be judged for every one of my actions on earth? But then I look at all of these people that live completely empty lives just so they can go to heaven, and all the people who’ve come down here living lives that they loved. And vis versa. There’s no guarantee of anything either way, but it’ll happen no matter what anyone says about it.

“If I’m honest, I don’t like thinking about it. It scares me a little, just how _uncertain_ life is, even though the ultimate certainty is death and being sorted to one of two eternities. Humans can’t fall, remember? If they’re up there, they’re up there. If they’re down here, they’re down here. I don’t know why it’s different for angels.”

Scott just hums. He’s never really thought of any of that that way, just accepted it as the way things were and moved on.

“Sorry, I’m rambling again,” Mitch says, blushing a little in the dim light.

“No, you’re fine, I’ve just never stopped to think about it, I guess. I’ve always just kind of accepted it and kept living, y’know? I’ve never seen the use of questioning something I couldn’t do anything about. When you put it that way, though, I guess it really is interesting in a way. Like none of you all are bad people, per se. You’re not sadistic fuckers or evil chaos-causers, at least not that I’ve seen so far. Kirstin and Esther are really nice. You’re really nice. It’s not what they taught us up there.”

“Good and evil are subjective,” Mitch says softly, and Scott nods. “The way I see it, if you’re hurting someone else with your actions or choices, it’s bad. If you’re not, if it’s something that primarily affects you and very little of anyone else, it’s your prerogative. Like if I want to marry a boy, that’s not hurting anyone, but it’s still banned in a lot of places around the world. If I want to murder someone, though, it’s hurting that person and the people around them, so that’d be bad. Does that make sense?”

“It does. I like that way of looking at it.”

“Good.”

They stand together in silence, the demon and the fallen angel, staring at white light against darkness, both occupied in their own thoughts.

“I think you’ll do just fine down here,” Mitch says after a few minutes. He looks up at Scott, and Scott feels his gaze burning through his eyes.

“I hope so, because I’m stuck here for the rest of forever,” Scott says with a little smile, and Mitch grins, dimple appearing in his cheek.

“Stuck with me and the rest of my friends. C’mon, I’ll introduce you to the rest of us before dinner.”

 

 

-fin.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment or kudos if you like good vs evil discourse bc it's very interesting to me sdgjjkfg


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